Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Do you all remember when I went out hunting lilies? Chocolatelilies, to be exact. And I didn't find them? Well, hold on....I found them today...buckets full...well, one bucket full, anyway. Not that I picked a bucketful, or even a single one. But I just got home from walkies and I have to go get ready for the Neighbourhood Walk(since my running partner cancelled on me tonight cuz it's her boyfriend's birthday yadda yadda...as if that is excuse enough) and I want to make ravioli for dins tonight(craving cheese and pasta, bad on a night with no run).So yeah, be prepared...more photos of chocolate lilies tomorrow, whether you like it or not! Cuz I love those little buggers.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Saturday was beautiful here...we puttered in the garden, walked the dog, lingered in the sunshine, bbq'ed our supper and put the day to rest in bliss.Sunday was dismal. Raining and chilly and "You have to light the pellet stove before I get out of bed....." Really, I am altogether "over" Spring. C'mon Summer!!! At least it didn't snow.Around 3pm the rain stopped and as Eem-er was bored out of her mind and circling Crazytown with toenails endlessly ticking, running laps around the hardwood floors, we bolted for Bowen Park for a walk. These are old culverts to direct the run-off. Once upon a time, they were water pipes made out of cedar and wrapped in iron. Only the wrapping remains today. The wooden pipes have long since worn or washed away.

Here is Eem-er reflecting on Island Life, and Dog Walks.

Skunk Cabbage. It is EVERYWHERE. It is beautiful to see right now, and not too stinky. I guess there are some bonuses to this cool Spring. It has kept the smells down.

The Rhodie Garden at Bowen is not its usual extravagant self....again, the cool weather has kept the glorious blooms from their typical glory. Not too many in bloom yet.

Funnel web. Cool, eh?

New fern growth always reminds me of Dr. Suess books.

Red....

and white.....after the rain.

Again, I seem to be reaching for subjects to write about...but the dogwalks continue. Thank goodness for that, eh?

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Friday, April 25, 2008

A week went by?So, wow...it's Friday already. Really?Truly? I don't know where the week went...but it's gone. I think I took about five photos...and posted one entry.

Strange.

But, all in all, I think it's been a little quiet in Blogtown lately, don't you? I hope we're all having fun with whatever it is we're doing. I don't recall what I have been doing, but I hope I have been having fun, too.

This weekend, we plan to get the garden in shape, stake up the hops (which are growing like things possessed and willing to take over the planet.)... there was more, but my mind often goes blank when I try to remember chores.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Monday, April 21, 2008

Well, it started melting pretty quickly but the damage was done. Many cherry trees around here lost large limbs and branches. Some just snapped entirely under the weight of all that wet snow. So sad. Apparently Beban Park lost some trees, too, but I haven't been to that side of town yet. I'll swing by later on my way home from the grocery store to look. Yesterday, we got down to the river for a walk and it seemed devastated. Trees and limbs down, shrubs and bushes and undergrowth lay flat on the ground. Two days earlier while walking there, we had found broken blue eggshells from newly hatched robins on the ground. In a couple of those spots, I don't even see the trees they might have come from anymore...nor do I see how the mamas could have kept 9 inches of snowfall from their tiny featherless babies with no leaves to help shield them yet sprouted....damn climate change. We did see a number of hummingbirds out and about yesterday, so hopefully there are enough blooms left on the trees and bushes to keep them fed for a while.

Two days earlier, in the warm sun, we saw multitudes of the little garter snakes I love so much sunning themselves in the warmest spots. Yesterday, we saw little dead snakes everywhere, frozen or drowned in the meltoff. I know you all don't love my little green garters like I do, but it really was quite heartbreaking for me. They always make my heart beat so fast and fierce. My Grandma used to catch them with me when I was a kid in her garden. We'd feel their smooth skin, talk gently, and lay them back down in the warm-turned earth and watch them slide away.

They are a little bit like Love to me, my little green garters. Love and warm-turned soil, dusty raspberries fresh from the vine, blue-veined, dirt-stained fingers showing me which are weeds to pull and which are the sweet carrot greens, the smell of roses....

Saturday, April 19, 2008

So, um, yeah...this was taken two days ago of the yard out front around the pond we put in...two. days. ago. My viburnum is leafing, poppies coming in, bluebonnets and tulips and daffies all ablaze. Oh, and the lovely yellow flowers on one of the pond plants...it's Spring...really, truly Spring, despite the much lower than average temperatures for a month, the lack of bees to pollenate my blooming peach tree, the need to still wear four layers of clothing...it's Spring.... Oh, wait...I took this at 7am this morning....it's the same corner of the same yard near the same pond.

Last I looked out the window last night(this morning) at 1:30am after shutting off the light and finally putting my book down, it was raining. The roads were wet and it was raining....at 1:30am.

By this morning, there were 9 inches of snow outside. Nine. Effing. Inches. Of. Snow.

Please, somebody, anybody.....come pick up your weather and take it back where it belongs.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Eem-er's special friend Julia turns five years old today! Julia and her family, our good friends, live in Kaslo where Michael and I spent a week last summer....where I fell in love with the idea of living there, too. With the bears. Julia and her sister and brother shared my overwhelming excitement and joy of the

bear-watching with me(shriekingly so!)...and Julia made a fast and devoted friend of Eem-er.

Happy Birthday.

Love from us all.

We'll celebrate everyone's birthdays when we see you in Sechelt?!? It'll be a grand party!

Monday, April 14, 2008

Also, while my friends were here, we headed up to one of my favorite places, the Coombs Old Country Market. So many renovations over the winter, and this was my first trip of the season since it opened again last month. I could stay all day and spend a fortune, if I had time enough and money. But, I don't. Have time enough and money, that it. So we stayed just for one afternoon, ate lunch there and spent too much money anyway. There is this old bus graveyard along the way. Must be 15 or 20 of these old double-decker sightseeing buses parked side by side by side. They might have once been used in Victoria or something. I don't know. But I can't seem to pass them up without stopping for photos. I don't know how many photos I have taken of these buses over the past four years. Too many to count.

I always have the wish to take one of these and make a guest house out of it. I would need a bigger yard, that's for sure. Maybe someday. Or? Maybe Michael and I will live in one someday...move out to the boonies, live on a converted bus in the trees near a river, never see another crackhead or deal with city planners with no insight. Never have to move a hooker along from working in front of my neighbour's six year old daughter again or have to throw up my hands in exasperation of the idiotic endeavours of yet another social service agency so focused on their idea of what is best for their clients(and their own paychecks) that they can't see the damage they are doing to the neighbourhood.

Maybe we could move so far away that....never mind...sorry. I digress.

I woke up grumpy today after dreaming all night about the 7-10 Club going in across the street.

And about seeing John Horn, our secretive, behind-closed-doors-kind-of city social planner, across the street, too...only that part wasn't a dream. That really happened. It's infuriating that the City, in any way, shape, or form, is looking to either condone another social service or help fund a social service in this neighbourhood (given every study the city has paid for says it's a bad idea), let alone in a building owned by one of the city's most criminally negligent and ethically corrupt landlords. The City should be walking the heads of every social service agency through the rest of Mr. Saroya's holdings so that they can see just what type of person they are dealing with...housing so filthy and gross nobody should be allowed to live in it, let alone PAY to live in it... direct deposit from the government, in most cases...and just how much does the city spend each year in dealing with his properties? Emergency calls? By-Law calls? Police? Health code violations? Etc., ad infinitum ad naseum. Blah blah blah.

Dangit....I digress again.

I am so tired.

Anyhow, it poured and snowed and sleeted and hailed on the day we went to the market, but the skies broke sunny and warm long enough while we were there to enjoy the whole touristy-kitschyness of the place.

The goats came out.....they live on the roof there, ya know? Well, not this one. He was in the yard. Isn't he a doll? Don't you just want to bring him home with you?!? Me, too!!! Me, too!!!

We also went on a new walk. One that I hadn't been on before. I was inspired by Olly.

It's not that easy to find directions to this place. Halsam Creek. And then, after you find directions? It's still not easy to find. The directions do not say that you have to go through a rock quarry and an active logging sight( not so pretty)... that there will be no signs pointing you towards something as nationally unifying as the Trans Canada trail.

We had to stop someone on the road, and he said "just go up this road...."

"Past that giant KEEP OUT sign?" I asked."That doesn't mean anything," he said. "Then you just head up the road and there's a place to park, some signs...you can't miss it."

"Thanks," I said.

He doesn't know me very well.

I guess he meant this 3 inch by three inch sign 15 feet up the tree, on a craptastic logging road and the place to park was the wide spot that barely looked like a pull-out.

Or maybe he meant this sign....no expense spared on the Trans Canada Trail markers, now. Is there? But we had to backtrack to find them at all cuz we did miss it....despite him telling us that we couldn't possibly miss it. So we took a wicked ride along some bumpy logging roads. My friend's kid was having a good time with it. I just kept praying we wouldn't be swallowed up by one of those potholes up there.

Eventually, we figured out that we had overshot the "well-marked trail" and retraced our route until we found the two-year old, winter and rainy-seasoned Sharpie Sign pointing out the trail.

Finally we found what we had to set out to find.

The suspension bridge.

Cool, eh?

Looking right from the middle.....

Looking left.

Turns out, once you have walked 1.5 Kilometres down the trail, there is a really nice signboard with a map that shows the way to walk all the way from the Sharpie Sign to here and then, eventually, here. Two of my favorite dog walking spots. Maybe we should try to make that whole hike one day...one very long strenuous day.....

So, okay, speaking of dog walks, I better get out of here...got to get a move on today so I can rest up before my running class tonight. Ugh.

And I better get out of here before I start ranting again, too.

I need to save all that up for my letters to the City Social Planner, City Council, the papers, VIHA, the 7-10 Club.....I don't want use up all my big words here, now, do I?

Friday, April 11, 2008

So many photos to go through! Yikes. Get two shutterbugs together and watch out! You get nowhere in a hurry! So we got off to a slowish start...me dragging everyone around on sloppy, soggy, muddy dogwalking excursions. It never even occurs to me that this might not be fun for everybody. So, if you ever come to visit me? Be prepared. Bring your hiking boots, ok? I took them to Chase River Estuary and to Harewood Mines and countless times around the neighbourhood...we went to a new spot which I will tell you about later because I haven't worked on those photos yet. I hauled them up to Shady Mile Farm Market, where I go to get an endorphin boost by feeding the animals.

They had ducklings for sale. How cute are they? 2 for $20...

So we just fed the little ravenous creatures....who must not have had much company lately because they were aggressive and kinda rude this trip, not their usual overfed and complacent selves.

We tried to photograph the redwing blackbirds, but they didn't really let us get too close. Neither did the towhees or the little finch-like birds we saw. Dangit.

Of course, the ducks were overly friendly until they saw we didn't have anything to feed them.

And in the weak heat of a pale sun, a little cave of snakes had awoken and were trying to warm themselves on the rocks. At first, they were afraid of our intrusion, but soon enough got used to us being there, even seemed to get a bit bold with the cameras, coming right up to look in the lenses...I won't try and post all the photos. You'd be here all day, and the weekend's coming! You all should have something better to do with your time! And if you don't, grab your hiking boots and head on over.

Anyhoo, that is all I got for you today. I will work on some more photos this weekend. Show you our trip to Coombs, and our trek along part of the TransCanada Trail.